Method and system for controlling establishment of communication channels in a contact centre

ABSTRACT

A method for controlling establishment of a communication channel between a service provider terminal of a contact center and a service request terminal is disclosed. The method comprises responding to receipt of a request to establish the communication channel by: 
     a) determining whether a license for a media type associated with the communication channel is allocated to the service provider terminal; 
     b) if a license is determined to be allocated to the service provider terminal, allowing establishment of the communication channel; 
     c) if a license is determined not to be allocated to the service provider terminal, determining availability of a license from a pool of licenses; 
     d) if a license is determined not to be available, refusing establishment of the communication channel; and 
     e) if a license is determined to be available, allocating the license to the service provider terminal and allowing establishment of the communication channel.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

This invention relates to a method and system for controllingestablishment of a communication channel between a service providerterminal of a contact centre and a service request terminal.

For the purposes of this document the term “service provider terminal”is defined as the terminal of a user (agent or expert) which is directlyor indirectly associated with the contact center service. This terminalcan be located anywhere inside or outside the enterprise providing thecontact center service. For the purposes of this document the term“service request terminal” means the terminal of a user requesting thecontact center service, generally a customer of the contact centerservice. This terminal can be located anywhere inside or outside theenterprise providing the contact center service.

BACKGROUND TO THE INVENTION

FIG. 1 shows a contact centre 1 for handling customer queries which arereceived by a company. Such systems are extremely widely used forconnecting customers' calls to a group of agents who can assist thecustomer with their queries.

The contact centre 1 comprises three main components. These are acontact centre switch 2, which handles reception of calls from customers4 and routes them to an appropriate one of the group of agents 6; alicense authority 3, which manages the allocation of licenses to thegroup of agents 6; and a user administration server 4, which handlesinformation about each of the group of agents 6, such as which mediatypes they can receive queries on.

The customers 5 can connect to the contact centre 1 via any of a varietyof media types, such as voice (i.e. mobile or landline telephony),e-mail, hypertext transfer protocol data gathered from a website forexample, instant messaging, and short messaging service (SMS).

As shown, the group of agents 6 operate in the “Front Office” of thecompany, which is the section or department of the company responsiblefor receiving and handling customer queries.

There is also a “Back Office”, which doesn't normally interact with thecustomers 5 or handle their queries. However, there are a group ofexperts 7 within the Back Office, who can be contacted by any of thegroup of agents 6 if the nature of a query is beyond the level ofknowledge or experience of the agent. In this event, the expert willhopefully be able to assist with handling and successfully disposing ofthe customer's query.

The quantity of queries from customers, and the media types for thecommunication channels over which those queries are received, isdetermined by the availability of licenses from a license server, suchas the license authority 3. Typically, a company will purchase a givennumber of licenses which are allocated as needed to the agents 6 of thecontact centre 1.

The manner in which the licenses are allocated in a typical scenario isin accordance with the flow chart of FIG. 2. The process of licenseallocation to one of the agents 6 starts when the agent attempts tologin to the contact centre 1 in step 10. The contact centre 1 performsan authentication process on the login details provided by the agent instep 11. If the login details cannot be authenticated then the loginrequest is refused in step 12.

If, on the other hand, the login details are determined to be valid instep 11 then, in step 13, a connection with the user administrationserver 4 is established and details of the media types that the agent isconfigured to handle are retrieved. These details are used by thecontact centre to determine whether a query received on a particularmedia type can be passed to the agent.

They are also used to attempt to acquire a license, in step 14, from thelicense authority 3 for each of the media types for which details wereretrieved from the user administration server 4. This is done byrequesting from the license authority 3 whether, for the first mediatype which the agent is configured to handle, a license is available instep 15. If a license is not available then all licenses alreadyallocated (which will be none at this stage) are released in step 16 andthe login is refused in step 12.

If, on the other hand, a license is available for the required mediatype then the license is allocated by the license authority 4 to (or“consumed by”) the agent in step 17.

In step 18, if more licenses are required by the agent for other mediatypes then processing reverts to step 14, which attempts to acquire thelicense as explained above. If any one of the licenses required is notavailable for allocation then all licenses already allocated will bereleased in step 16 and the login refused in step 12.

However, if all the licenses required are successfully allocated thenthe login is successful in step 19. The licenses allocated in this wayare not released until the agent logs out of the contact centre 1,regardless of whether the agent is actively using the media typeassociated with a license. This, however, leads to a problem with thistechnique for license allocation, which will be explained by way ofexample below.

In the example, once the agent has logged on to the contact centre 1,they are presented with customer queries or requests on the media typeswhich they are configured to handle. Whenever a customer query orrequest is routed to this agent, he can communicate directly with thecustomer using a communication channel established via the contactcentre switch 2.

Whilst handling a query or request, the agent may need assistance fromone of the experts 7 in the back office. The agent can connect to one ofthe experts 7 as appropriate and consult with them regarding thecustomer's query or request. This does not require allocation of anyadditional licenses from the license authority 3.

If he feels it is necessary, the agent may connect the customer directlyto the expert via the contact centre switch 2. Now the customer, agentand expert can all communicate with each other using the appropriatemedia type. However, this again does not consume any additional licensesfrom the license authority 3.

If the agent feels that he is no longer required to handle thecustomer's request or query then he may decide to leave the furtherhandling and disposal of the customer's request or query to the expertand move on to a new request. Thus, the expert and customer are nowconnected via the contact centre switch 2, which is being utilisedwithout any licenses being allocated for the establishment of thecommunication channel via the contact centre switch 2.

As can be seen, the current technique for allocation of licenses in acontact centre environment does not adapt well to situations such asthat given as an example above, and can result in the contact centrebeing utilised without any license allocation at all. This can lead tosituations where the contact centre switch's capacity is achieved eventhough all the licenses have not been used.

SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

In accordance with one aspect of the invention, there is provided amethod for controlling establishment of a communication channel betweena service provider terminal of a contact centre and a service requestterminal, the method comprising responding to receipt of a request toestablish the communication channel by:

a) determining whether a license for a media type associated with thecommunication channel is allocated to the service provider terminal;

b) if a license is determined to be allocated to the service providerterminal, allowing establishment of the communication channel;

c) if a license is determined not to be allocated to the serviceprovider terminal, determining availability of a license from a pool oflicenses;

d) if a license is determined not to be available, refusingestablishment of the communication channel; and

e) if a license is determined to be available, allocating the license tothe service provider terminal and allowing establishment of thecommunication channel.

Hence, the invention provides a method and system in which the licenseallocation and establishment of a communication channel are tiedtogether: the communication channel may only be established if a licenseis available for allocation or has already been allocated. Thus, theresources of the contact centre are only available when a license can beallocated and the problem mentioned above is overcome.

Due to the invention, all users of the contact centre are allocatedlicenses in the same manner, and this reflects the activity of thecontact centre more accurately. It is therefore helpful with planningcontact centre capacity and the like using reporting data related tocommunications handled by the contact centre gathered during the contactcentre's use. Establishment of communications through the contact centreare handled in the same way, irrespective of which users (e.g. theagents and experts) are involved. This is vital for accurate analysis ofcontact centre capacity requirements.

Typically, the allocation of a license for a media type associated withthe communication channel to the service provider terminal is made byallocating the license to a user of the service provider terminal.

The media type associated with the communication channel may be one of:voice, e-mail, hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), instant messaging andshort message service (SMS).

The service provider terminal may be either one of a first type ofterminal or one of a second type of terminal, the first type of terminalbeing capable of receiving incoming calls directly from the contactcentre, and the second type of terminal being capable of joiningincoming calls on request by a terminal of the first type.

Typically, the step of determining whether a license for a media typeassociated with the communication channel is allocated to the serviceprovider terminal is performed by interrogation of a license server,which maintains a record of allocation of each of the licenses in thepool, the record indicating the identity of a service provider terminaland/or user to which each license is currently allocated.

Preferably, the step of determining availability of a license from apool of licenses is performed by interrogation of a license server,which maintains a record of allocation of each of the licenses in thepool, the record indicating the identity of a service provider terminaland/or user to which each license is currently allocated.

In a typical embodiment, the step of allocating the license to theservice provider terminal comprises receipt, at a license server,details of the identity of a terminal and/or user and updating a recordof allocation of an unallocated license in the pool with the identity ofthe service provider terminal and/or user.

Preferably, the method further comprises storing a record of allowingestablishment of the communication channel.

The record of allowing establishment of the communication channel maycomprise the identity of the service provider terminal and/or user.

The record of allowing establishment of the communication channeltypically comprises the time of establishment of the communicationchannel. In this case, the record of allowing establishment of thecommunication channel preferably comprises the length of time for whichthe communication channel is established.

In accordance with a second aspect of the invention, there is provided acontact centre system comprising one or more processors adapted toperform the method of the first aspect by controlling operation of atelecommunications switch coupled to the one or more processors andoperable to establish one or more communication channels between one ormore service provider terminals of a contact centre and one or moreservice request terminals.

In accordance with a third aspect of the invention, there is provided acomputer program comprising computer-implementable instructions, whichwhen executed by a programmable computer causes the programmablecomputer to perform a method in accordance with the first aspect.

In accordance with a fourth aspect of the invention, there is provided acomputer program product comprising a computer program, which whenexecuted by a programmable computer causes the programmable computer toperform a method in accordance with the first aspect.

Other aspects and features of the present invention will become apparentto those of ordinary skill in the art upon review of the followingdescription of specific embodiments of the invention in conjunction withthe accompanying figures.

DETAILED DISCLOSURE OF THE EMBODIMENT

An embodiment of the invention will now be described with reference tothe accompanying drawings, in which:

FIG. 1 shows a schematic representation of a contact centre on which theinvention may be performed.

FIG. 2 shows a prior art technique for license allocation within acontact centre.

FIG. 3 shows a technique for license allocation in accordance with anembodiment of the invention.

Specifically, in FIG. 3 there is shown a flowchart describing thetechnique by which licenses are allocated, and by which theestablishment of communication channels through the call centre 1 isthereby controlled. The technique is performed using the call centrearchitecture shown in FIG. 1 and described above.

In the flowchart of FIG. 3, the license allocation technique starts, instep 20, with a request for a connection to be made. This could be aconnection from one of the service request terminals of customers 5 toone of the service provider terminals of the group of agents 6 requiredto handle an incoming customer query, or it could be a connectionbetween the service provider terminal of the agent and/or the servicerequest terminal of the customer and a terminal of one of the group ofexperts 7, for example when joining an existing call between a customerand agent.

As before, and as shown schematically in FIG. 1, a variety of differentmedia types of communication channel are supported, such as voice,e-mail, hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), instant messaging and shortmessage service (SMS).

In response to this connection request, in step 21 the license server 3is sent details of the user's identity and the media type of theconnection required (i.e. the media type for the communication channelwhich is required to be established). In step 22, it is determinedwhether the user of the service provider terminal (i.e. the agent orexpert as appropriate) has a license for this media type already. Thisis done by interrogating the license server 3, which maintains a recordof allocation of each of the licenses in a pool of licenses held andmanaged by the license server 3. The record indicates the identity ofthe service provider terminal and/or user to which each license iscurrently allocated. If a license has already been allocated to theservice provider terminal and/or user then the connection request isgranted in step 24 and the establishment of the communication channel isallowed.

If, on the other hand, the user does not already have a license for themedia type associated with the communication channel to be establishedthen, in step 23, the availability of a license from the pool oflicenses is determined by interrogating the license server 3. This isdone by interrogation of the license server 3, which maintains a recordof allocation of each of the licenses in the pool, the record indicatingthe identity of the service provider terminal and/or user to which eachlicense is currently allocated. If a license for this media type is notavailable (for example, because they have all been allocated already ornone has been purchased) then the connection is refused in step 25 andthe communication channel is not established.

However, if in step 23 a license for the media type of the communicationchannel is determined to be available then in step 26, the license forthe media type associated with the communication channel to beestablished is allocated to the user of the service provider terminal.The allocation of the license to the service provider terminal involvessending to the license server 3 details of the identity of a terminaland/or user and updating the record of allocation of one of theunallocated licenses in the pool with the identity of the serviceprovider terminal and/or user.

At the same time as the license is allocated in step 26, a record thatthe establishment of the communication channel is allowed is stored inthe user administration server 4 in step 27. This record may include theidentity of the service provider terminal and/or user and the time ofestablishment of the communication channel. When the channel isdestroyed after it has been used, the record may be updated with detailsof the length of time for which the communication channel wasestablished. Then in step 24, the connection is successfully allowed andthe communication channel may be established.

As can be seen from the above description, the technique for controllingestablishment of a communication channel is based on allocating licensesdepending on the actual communication traffic that must be handled bythe contact centre switch 2 rather than how many agents have logged into the contact centre 1. This allows for more meaningful and precisepricing of the contact centre licenses to be made and also allows moreaccurate reporting of the activity of the contact centre to beperformed.

Licenses are allocated by the method and system of the invention on aone-to-one basis based on users' (either the agents or the expertsreferred to above) activity. Thus, a license is allocated when contactcentre switch 2 software is actually servicing a customer to agent orexpert communication. Specifically, if an agent and an expert areworking in conference on a customer query then two licenses would beallocated for the duration of that consultation as opposed to the singlelicense that would previously have been allocated to the agent only.Similarly a single license would be consumed for the duration of acustomer to expert communication where the agent originally involved hasceased to be involved with the communication.

The invention provides the ability to allow contact centre licenses tobe sold based on an accurate reflection of the contact centre's use.Organisations using contact centres which employ or outsource growingpools of experts (or liaise with other organisational elements overcontact centre channels such as Instant Messaging) will find theirrequirements for licenses expanding as their contact throughputincreases. However, the same licenses will not be allocated unless theyare being actively used. This invention more accurately reflects theusage of contact centre software resources than the conventional licenseallocation system and results in a more meaningful and precise pricingmodel.

1. A method for controlling establishment of a communication channelbetween a service provider terminal of a contact centre and a servicerequest terminal, the method comprising responding to receipt of arequest to establish the communication channel by: a) determining, usingone or more processors, whether a license for a media type associatedwith the communication channel is allocated to the service providerterminal; b) if a license is determined to be allocated to the serviceprovider terminal, the one or more processors allowing establishment ofthe communication channel; c) if a license is determined not to beallocated to the service provider terminal, determining, using the oneor more processors, availability of a license from a pool of licenses;d) if a license from the pool of licenses is determined not to beavailable, the one or more processors refusing establishment of thecommunication channel; and e) if a license from the pool of licenses isdetermined to be available, the one or more processors allocating thelicense from the pool of licenses to the service provider terminal andallowing establishment of the communication channel.
 2. A methodaccording to claim 1, wherein the allocation of a license for a mediatype associated with the communication channel to the service providerterminal is made by allocating the license to a user of the serviceprovider terminal.
 3. A method according to claim 1, wherein the mediatype associated with the communication channel is one of: voice, e-mail,hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), instant messaging and short messageservice (SMS).
 4. A method according to claim 1, wherein the serviceprovider terminal is either one of a first type of terminal or one of asecond type of terminal, the first type of terminal being capable ofreceiving incoming calls directly from the contact centre, and thesecond type of terminal being capable of joining incoming calls onrequest by a terminal of the first type.
 5. A method according to claim1, wherein the step of determining whether a license for a media typeassociated with the communication channel is allocated to the serviceprovider terminal is performed by interrogation of a license server,which maintains a record of allocation of each of the licenses in thepool, the record indicating the identity of a service provider terminaland/or user to which each license is currently allocated.
 6. A methodaccording to claim 1, wherein the step of determining availability of alicense from a pool of licenses is performed by interrogation of alicense server, which maintains a record of allocation of each of thelicenses in the pool, the record indicating the identity of a serviceprovider terminal and/or user to which each license is currentlyallocated.
 7. A method according to claim 1, wherein the step ofallocating the license to the service provider terminal comprisesreceipt, at a license server, details of the identity of a terminaland/or user and updating a record of allocation of an unallocatedlicense in the pool with the identity of the service provider terminaland/or user.
 8. A method according to claim 1, further comprisingstoring a record of allowing establishment of the communication channel.9. A method according to claim 8, wherein the record of allowingestablishment of the communication channel comprises the identity of theservice provider terminal and/or user.
 10. A method according to claim8, wherein the record of allowing establishment of the communicationchannel comprises the time of establishment of the communicationchannel.
 11. A method according to claim 10, wherein the record ofallowing establishment of the communication channel comprises the lengthof time for which the communication channel is established.
 12. Acontact centre system comprising one or more processors configured toperform the method of claim 1 by controlling operation of atelecommunications switch coupled to the one or more processors andoperable to establish one or more communication channels between one ormore service provider terminals of a contact centre and one or moreservice request terminals.
 13. A non-transitory computer readable mediumcomprising program instructions, which when executed by a programmablecomputer causes the programmable computer to perform a method inaccordance with claim 1.